


Weight

by Wrenlet



Category: Invisible Man
Genre: Community: picfor1000, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-27
Updated: 2005-02-27
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:59:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wrenlet/pseuds/Wrenlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set mostly pre-series; Darien has issues. This is news to who, now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://slodwick.livejournal.com/profile)[slodwick](http://slodwick.livejournal.com/)'s ["A Picture is Worth 1000 Words" Challenge: 3rd Time's a Charm](http://picfor1000.dreamwidth.org/501.html), assigned pic is below. Thanks to [](http://burntsm0re.livejournal.com/profile)[burntsm0re](http://burntsm0re.livejournal.com/) for fast, helpful beta :)
> 
> Spoilers: sporadic through 208, Den of Thieves
> 
>  

_Old times, new crimes._

Darien took up weight lifting during his last stretch in juvenile detention. He wasn't sure why, except that it was something to do and maybe he'd thought... well, never mind what he thought.

Probably the same thing as when he'd decided to hit that electronics store -- pull something flashy, one man outfit on a two man job. Which just went to show he hadn't been thinking much at all.

Not with his head, anyway, and Liz had had more cross words for ego-based stupidity than just about anything else.

_Practice makes the pro._

Darien had lots of time to practice. Plenty of willing teachers too, because, man, he had skills most of these kids had never seen. Archie hadn't known what to do with a door but kick it in and Darien hadn't known how to hot-wire a car. That all changed, and so did a lot of other things.

Liz once told him she took him on because he was a quick study and good with his hands. "Not every day a twelve-year-old lifts my pocketbook, kiddo, you showed some real promise." Darien had gone along because it sounded a damn sight cooler than peddling the crap he found breaking into the teachers' lounge and besides, it was high time Darien had a chance to shine at something, something that was just for him. He was pretty sure Kevin would have made a lousy thief.

That was all Before, of course. Before he'd spent half a day waiting for Liz to show up at the usual spot with his share of the take, and then three more hitting up everyone he knew who knew her and not finding her, not finding anything. It wasn't quite as if she'd never existed, more like she'd gone invisible somehow.

So he'd figured, maybe if he did a job big enough to catch her attention... he got the wrong kind, though, and that's how he ended up in juvie, trying to convince a pack of criminals-in-training he was one of them when really he was starting to get the idea that maybe he wasn't. If he hadn't been so hung up on resenting his brother, he might have wondered if Kevin felt like that a lot of the time, too. At least he learned not to let his opportunities pass him by.

By the time Darien got out he was stronger. A little tougher, a little smarter, and he had a few new tricks up his sleeve.

Lizzie still didn't come back, though.

\--

_If it don't feel right, you walk. Just like I taught ya._

They'd been nice weights. Matched sets of dumbbells, ten, fifteen, twenty pounds.

Darien pushed the bar up off the crutches and shifted, feeling the mass of it press him down against the bench. Inhale down, exhale up... lather, rinse, repeat. Fifteen months.

The grips had been textured, which was nice when his palms got slick with sweat and he didn't particularly feel like dropping one on his foot. So Manny must have lifted his prints off the ends, where the weights were smooth and shiny.

Fucking Manny.

Darien should've known "lifting buddy" was code for patsy, should've felt it in his gut like Liz had always said he would if he just listened. But Liz had been gone for a lot of years, and maybe when the hole she'd left behind got to aching he forgot a few of her lessons.

Well, now he had fifteen months in the state pen to remember them again, all of the things she had taught him and maybe the one she hadn't meant to, that one he'd learned there at the end: as soon as you start thinking you can count on someone, they'll fuck you over and leave.

Darien was running two for two, and that was just too many.

He'd do his time, same as usual. Lift weights and hang out in the yard and probably get his ass in trouble, knowing him; fifteen months was a long time to keep his mouth shut and his fingers where they belonged. Strike two would be the last one, and when he left this time there wouldn't be any looking back.

And he knew one more thing: it'd be a cold day in hell before Darien Fawkes flew anything but solo ever again.

\--

_No one gets hurt if it's done right._

Luther's beard had more white in it than Darien remembered, but damn if the man didn't have a memory like a fucking elephant. How stupid would it be, for him to live through all the shit he'd seen in the last year, just to wind up back in the pen getting the crap kicked out of him over a candy bar?

Bobby would laugh his ass off. And then tell him he had no taste, lifting Butterfingers when there were maybe Three Musketeers to be had. Bobby would pretend not to understand Darien had mostly done it for the challenge, and because Luther was an ass, and maybe the next time Bobby asked him to pull out a map he'd reach into the van's glove box and get a fistful of candy bars instead.

Yeah, that'd be just like him.

Russell hated to be ignored, must've been a height thing. And hey, judging by the goons flanking the pair, Darien wasn't the only one who'd been moving up in the world lately.

Darien grinned at the muscle headed his way and reached casually for the stack of weights lying on the ground next to him. If anyone had been paying any attention to it, they'd have seen the dulled iron flash brilliant as new in the sun of the yard when he touched it -- a split second before it vanished entirely.

Fact was, he really didn't have time for this crap. Darien had a job to do; he had somewhere to be that wasn't the pen, and a partner counting on him to make it out.


End file.
